Jun 30, 2013

Never stop playing!/The Parkour Park


- I want to thank the City for believing in us and the obscure art of Parkour, which no one had heard of, impossible to explain. Today is truly a big day, thank you so much! And remember: never stop playing!

I am late, but the opening is late too and I am walking up the green slope just as Trouble 1 is holding his speech. I am so happy to be here. That I am able to be here this very moment. This, to my son and his friends, historic day.

Trouble 1 climbed before he could sit and walk. Trouble 2 was more cautious about his body, but of course tagged along with his older brother. And boys from the villages around the lake had a similar mind set, some more adventurous than others. The older they grew, the higher they climbed and jumped. The swings, tree tops, roofs, sandpits, big rocks, summer and winter, a lot of body and very little brain.

Nine-ten years ago they moved their physical activities from the rural place where they were children to a more urban setting. They had found the French extreme sport Parkour, which was just the perfect match and a natural development for their skills and urge.

Now, this was when my concerns about their intense extra curriculum PE stepped up to worries. The woods and sandpits are, after all, kind of soft. City alleys and parking garage aren’t. The ER visits became more frequent and I taught them not to run when someone called the cops because of their odd behavior, but to educate the Umeå police about Parkour and their doings.

Yesterday, the first of three planned redesigns for the downtown city parks was finished and opened to the public. Broparken (The Bridge Park) is a green rolling terraced slope facing the Umeå River and at the bottom there is the Parkour Park. The finest in the world. And I am listening to my oldest son inaugurating the park, thanking the City of Umeå for believing in him and his crazy friends, making their impossible dream come true.

It was about seven years ago when they first started making their initial sketches for a Parkour park. They were leaning in bunches over my kitchen table, sighing about the dark future for their new love. I encouraged them to move forward and they did. They very much did.

They started a Parkour association, which has grown to be one of the biggest and most vibrant in Sweden. They have tons of classes and courses, winter and summer, and their students are from pre school age and up. Suddenly I could here them talking about meetings in the City Hall with top names within the City. They had no idea of course about the dignity of all this, only frustrated about the slow pace of the proceedings within the power of democracy.

Yesterday Umeå Parkour association UPKF and the City of Umeå opened the first outdoor park in the world specially designed for the art of Parkour. The early climber Trouble 1 and his adventurous friends have grown into young men, very responsible when it comes to everything connected to their precious baby Parkour. They have developed the initial park sketches at my kitchen table to a unique place in the world, and the City trusted them with an absolute prime spot for it, right at the river in downtown Umeå.

-       I want to thank the City for believing in us and the obscure art of Parkour, which no one had heard of, impossible to explain. Today is truly a big day, thank you so much! And remember: never stop playing!

   I arrived just in time to hear my oldest son, confident and natural, glowing of happiness, holding a
   speech at the opening of a City park. Broparken is the first achieved goal out of many planned for
   Umeå, The European Capital of Culture 2014. A bunch of crazy kids have accomplished an
   impossible dream and provided Umeå a cutting edge culture and a beautiful and functional place
   for it to happen. I am not sure that they completely comprehend the greatness of their achievement, 
   but I hope they will. Because it is extraordinary.

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